The cooling of spent carbon anodes in the aluminium smelting industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics at Massey University

Abstract

As part of the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters (NZAS) upgrade, a hot butt cleaning system has been proposed, this would remove the bath from anodes as they are removed from the cells. It is expected that the time to cool for hot cleaned anodes would be significantly less than for current method of allowing the butts to cool before the bath is removed. In this project a mathematical model of the cooling process of both the clean and dirty anodes is developed. This model will aid in the investigation of the hot butt cleaning system by showing the difference in cooling times between the clean and dirty anodes. The temperature profiles within both clean and dirty anodes is calculated for one-, two- and three-dimensional models. Temperature changes in the anodes with time are also compared to experimental data.